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Had a job fall through at the last minute. Top 5% @ T2, Law Review, some semi-relevant prior work experience. Have done some of the obvious things (reached out to contacts, career center, applied to stuff through symplicity, contacted a few alumni at firms, etc.) already, but I'm wondering about the best way to go about my search, especially given that I'll also be studying for the bar so I need to be efficient.

Specific advice only, please. Don't tell me obvious stuff like "mail your resume to a bunch of firms" unless you have specific ideas about what kinds of firms to target.

Firms near your school; firms where you grew up / have other obvious and plausible, non-trivial geographic connections (things that will pop out from a facial scan of your resume; e.g., from the area code of your phone number; your home address zip code; cities where you interned, went to college . . .).

Might as well go ahead and jump into the 2012 clerkship cycle as well; go for federal and state both; same locations as suggested by the criteria above. Apply to literally every judge at any level in any area where you have some sort of plausible connection. You at least have the advantage now that you can apply to everyone off-plan (which you would be doing anyway, but at least now you don't even need to ask).

For finding jobs, start from the ground up, closest to you, and work upwards and outwards from there. State trial and COA courts often have low level, short-term slots for new JDs that open up randomly. Check the state bar journal / lawyer's newsletter for random listings. Your CSO should be able to point you to a good rundown of local sources for job postings. See if you can get courtesy access to the job boards from any of the local TTTs; they tend to be a more fertile source of low level, short-term, and quick filling openings that employers might not think to send to your school's CSO.

Also ask your CSO for local temp firms they've had recent grads use and not completely despite in the past; the work may suck, but it will keep the lights on until something else comes along.